X-ray and Radio Observations of Bright GeV Sources

Mallory Roberts, Roger Romani, Nobuyuki Kawai, Bryan Gaensler, Simon Johnston, Victoria Kaspi
McGill Uiv.
Stanford Univ.
RIKEN
MIT
RCFTA
McGill Univ.

We present X-ray and radio studies of sources which are bright above 1 GeV F(>1 GeV) > 4 X 10-8 ph cm-2s-1). The five known Blazars in this sample are all moderately bright compact X-ray sources and bright compact radio sources. There are 6 known pulsars in this group. Three have radio pulsar wind nebulae (PWN), two of which also have bright extended X-ray synchrotron nebulae. We will present results from an X-ray survey with ASCA of nearly all of the bright GeV sources which reveals an excess of F(2-10keV) > 10-12 ergs cm-2 s-1 sources within the EGRET error contours. In addition, we will present initial results from follow on radio imaging studies of several of these fields. We discover new X-ray/radio nebulae, including one around the newly discovered high Ë pulsar PSR J1420-6048 in the Kookaburra complex, in three GeV error contours which are strong candidates for PWN. However, these sources, along with similar nebulae in CTA 1 and the PWN around PSR B1853+01 in W44, are all associated with EGRET sources which are variable above 100 MeV. This suggests a class of variable $\gamma-$ray sources associated with synchrotron emitting regions powered by the winds of young pulsars.


mallory@astro.stanford.edu